Helping Ourselves to Power. A Handbook for Women on the Skills of Public Life

116 Pages·1986·1.888 MB·English

by  S. Slipman (Auth.)

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HELPING OURSELVES TO
POWER
A Handbook for Women
on the Skills of Public Life
by
SUE SLIPMAN
PERGAMON PRESS
OXFORD · NEW YORK · BEIJING · FRANKFURT
SÂO PAULO · SYDNEY · TOYKO · TORONTO
U.K. Pergamon Press, Headington Hill Hall,
Oxford 0X3 OBW, England
U.S.A. Pergamon Press, Maxwell House, Fairview Park.
Elmsford, New York 10523, U.S.A.
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC Pergamon Press, Qianmen Hotel, Beijing,
OF CHINA People's Republic of China
FEDERAL REPUBLIC Pergamon Press, Hammerweg 6,
OF GERMANY D-6242 Kronberg, Federal Republic of Germany
BRAZIL Pergamon Editora, Rua Eça de Queiros, 346,
CEP 04011, Sâo Paulo, Brazil
AUSTRALIA Pergamon Press Australia, P.O. Box 544,
Potts Point, N.S.W. 2011, Australia
JAPAN Pergamon Press, 8th Floor, Matsuoka Central Building,
1 -7-1 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160, Japan
CANADA Pergamon Press Canada, Suite 104,
150 Consumers Road, Willowdale, Ontario M2J 1P9, Canada
Copyright © 1986 Sue Slipman
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without permission in writing from the publishers.
First edition 1986
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Slipman, Sue.
Helping ourselves to power.
1. Women in politics. 2. Women in public life
3. Self-actualization (Psychology) 4. Assertiveness
(Psychology) I. Title.
HQ1390.S55 1986 305.4 85.31972
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Slipman, Sue
Helping ourselves to power: a handbook
for women on the skills of public life.
1. Women in politics
I. Title
320'.088042 HQ1236
ISBN 0-80-033363-X (Hard cover)
ISBN 0-08-033889-5 (Flexicover)
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co Ltd, Exeter
"Do you think that women should not have any brains?"
"Brains! A woman with brains is a monstrosity."
I never can understand why men are so terrified of women having special talents. They have no
consistency in argument. They are as sure as the Rock of Gibraltar that they have all the men-
tal superiority and that women are weak-minded, feeble conies; then why do they get in such a
mad-bull panic at any attempt on the part of women to express themselves? Men strut and
blow about themselves all the time without shame. In the matter of women's brain power they
organise conditions comparable to a foot race in which they have all the training and the
proper shoes and the running pants, while women are taken out of the plough, so to speak,
with harness and winkers still on them, and are lucky if they are allowed to start at scratch.
Then men bellow that they have won the race, that women never could, it would be against
NATURE if they did. Surely, it is not brave to so fear fair play. . . .
Miles Franklin, My Career Goes Bung, written in 1902 and published in Virago Classics in 1981.
ν
Acknowledgements
No training manual can claim to be an original work. It comes both from
personal experience and from the collaboration on training programmes,
conferences and schools with other women. This includes the participants
whose comments and criticisms help us improve our techniques and skills as
trainers in getting the information across, and in helping them to structure
their strategies for growth and confidence building.
I have worked with trainers and administrators in trade unions and pro-
fessional, voluntary and political organisations for a number of years. My
political experience comes from a host of women and men with whom I
have collaborated and occasionally crossed swords over the years. There are
too many of these to mention, but my thanks go to those I have worked
with on training: to Maggie Jones with whom I have run many events for
NUPE's women members; to Penny Gostyn whose assistance in Women for
Social Democracy is invaluable; to Polly Toynbee and Sue Stapely for pro-
viding practical help and fighting power for women.
Pauline Farrar has contributed material to the book in the Meetings
Skills sections, but she could not remember whether it was her own work or
inadvertently lifted from another trainer's ideas. She, in any case, believes
as most of us do that training ideas are meant to be shared and used.
Both Gilly Forryan and the members of the 300 Group Training Com-
mittee have greatly helped me as their Chair to sort out a programme of
training for boosting women into power and would all want to pay tribute
to Lesley Abdela for starting it all.
My colleague Pauline Stephens deserves gratitude not only for typing the
manuscript, but for reading it as a woman who wanted to know about its
contents. She also laughed at my jokes which was enormously comforting.
Martin Stott ran a very observant eye over the work and suggested useful
changes. Alice Salkeld and Tiffany Dow helped with some of the research.
Finally, thanks to all the women who give freely of their time and skills
to enable other women to become more powerful. For their solidarity is of
practical assistance without undue ideological demands: it is available to all
women and it aims to change the balance of power in our lives.
vi
1
Introduction:
Women Need Power
Why Women Need Power
This book is a practical training guide intended to help women, whatever
their political views, improve their skills. But the motive for writing it is a
political one. I believe that many of our achievements of the last twenty
years are under attack, and that we have got to consolidate our gains
through achieving positions from which we can more effectively influence
policy making.
The title for the introduction was chosen after some hesitation. I know
that some women are entirely sceptical about power and reject any notion of
women becoming decision makers in what they see as corrupt institutions.
But I believe it is crucial that we reach the next stage of our social advance,
or risk falling foul of the pressures that threaten us.
The Odds Against Us
Despite success for some women, the majority remain relatively poor,
with few job opportunities in low-paid occupations and with little childcare
support. More women work and their work is vital to family income, but
often they carry the double burden of work and domestic life. After years of
hard slog we have changed our aspirations and gained confidence but we
have not made a great deal of impact on the way the world is organised.
The world of work is still organised around men's patterns and priorities.
Welfare and benefit systems are shaped on the idea that women are depen-
dent upon men and available for unpaid, caring work, in the community.
The strain of being a modern woman without the necessary financial and
service support is severe.
Further pressure is added by the moralistic reformers who seek to take
society back to some mythical 'golden age' of harmony between men and
women, when in the separate spheres of power—public for men, domestic
for women—contentment was found.
1
2 Helping Ourselves to Power
The new moralism eschews permissiveness and promotes the 'normal'
family, by which it means a male breadwinner, with dependent wife and two
children. It promotes its vision of family life as the bastion of positive social
values. In its favour is a human revulsion with the twin excesses of permis-
siveness, promiscuity and pornography, which are seen to devalue human
sexuality and dignity. In reality it would rule through fear, imposing a stern
discipline upon social behaviour from the outside to limit individual free-
dom and choice. In seeking to re-establish authority it requires women to
give up their new-found freedom.
It is no accident that the new moralists attack the supply of contracep-
tion. In mobilising fears about the effects of chemical contraception upon
women's bodies and their future fertility, it undermines women where they
are weakest, in their desire to control their own fertility without risking
their desire to have children.
I do not feel that the women's movement has coped adequately with these
two often conflicting wishes in women. We talk about supporting women's
choices, but a lot of our demands upon women assume that they would
choose to be childless.
It may well be tempting for women who find their double burden too
much of a strain to fall back into a rosy vision of the past. It will take great
strength and conviction to resist the pressure.
Yet the new moralists are wrong in their assumptions. The social fabric
and the nature of family life has changed. The model of the family they
promote is now only 5%* of all households. There are now nearly a million
one-parent families, and many newly extended families from second and
even third marriages.
Whatever the negative effects of permissiveness, there is also a strong pos-
itive side which is vital to women. It gives support to the notion of a
pluralist society in which people with different beliefs and politics and life-
styles must all rub along together in a civilised way. It introduced a tolerance
for people's choices and sexual identities. Above all it provided recognition
that it is not the role of the state to impose a single moral dogma upon its
citizens.
Often the freedom was exploited by men at the expense of women. But
restricted societies were exploited by men at the expense of women. Only the
very few privileged women had the protection in Victorian England that the
new moralists claim, and then they bought it at a very high price. At least
under a permissive regime, if you were expected to say 'yes' you could also
take the power to say 'no' and seek the financial indepedence to allow you
to mean it.
For a permissive society to work it has to develop new social qualities :
—the maturity to handle the decentralised power it confers upon its
citizens.
*General Household Survey 1981.
Introduction: Women Need Power 3
—the caring and compassion which have traditionally been supplied by
women in the private sphere must be incorporated into public policy
making.
—a voluntary attachment from individual citizens to the needs of others,
creating the social fabric of the community in a responsible way.
In other words we must get through to the next stage of our quiet revolu-
tion: men must change to enable women to be free. Women must become
more powerful to effect the change in men and to re-shape society to more
human needs.
The Mood of Women in the Eighties
I became committed to training work in the skills of decision making for
women after attending a conference organised by the Aspern Institute in
1982. It discussed 'whither women' and its participants, made up of equal
numbers of enlightened men and women took two votes on issues of vital
importance to women.
The evidence was contradictory. It pointed to massive changes in women's
aspirations from the boom economies of the sixties, to a turning point in the
mid-seventies as these Western economies went into decline when hard-won
welfare services were under attack and more liberal ideas disappeared with
the boom. The prognosis was gloomy. Despite this, when the participants
were asked to indicate their instincts about the future by voting, the results
were revealing.
The first vote was on whether or not women in general would chose to
take time out of their working lives to be with young children if they lived in
a world in which it would make little difference to their careers. All the men
voted that they would not and all the women that they would. The second
vote was on whether or not women in general would cave in to the pressures
on them to retreat back into the family away from the public domain. All
the men voted that they would, all the women that they would not.
I believe it showed both women's determination to advance, despite the
odds, and men's reluctance to change, despite their new-found enlightened
views.
If that determined mood is to win through, the eighties must be years of
consolidation and growth, and they must concentrate on making men
change. I do not believe men will change until they are forced to share
power with women. They will not be forced to do this until women have the
direction and the confidence to take power. Only when women become deci-
sion makers, can we bring our priorities into the heart of the currently
exclusively male power blocks. Busting these blocks open is now a major pri-
ority.
4 Helping Ourselves to Power
The Current Position
So far women who have broken through have done it in ones and twos.
They have often been isolated, undermined and trivialised, when they fight
for women. The 'Queen Bee' syndrome developed out of this isolation. But
there is now a new breed of woman politician: women who speak on the
defence and economy and are taken seriously, and who also change the rules
for women. Women who support, encourage and promote other women.
Women who are out to change men, not become incorporated by them.
Our society is in a state of change. The legal framework operates as if
equal opportunities between men and women are a reality. Witness the way
in which divorce law reform was shaped on the premise of women's capacity
to be financially independent. Because reality is a far cry from these new
assumptions for most women it often seems like a male backlash to punish
women who make them feel threatened.
There is a contradiction within feminist thinking. We both want to have
freedom and protection from it and our critics have been quick to jump on
this. Increasingly we must state our long-term goals clearly, and win an
approach towards them that is transitional, encouraging women to take
advantage of new opportunities whilst we protect those who are in no posi-
tion yet to do so.
We must not fall into the trap of condemning the high flyers amongst
women because there are women living in poverty with no such advantages.
The high flyers are both the pioneers and the role models. More importantly
they are the policy shapers who can make a difference to all women's lives.
One woman in the public world is isolated in an often hostile terrain: two
women are an alliance and three a campaign. Together we are opening up
the chink of space to let women through. We now need to open up the train-
ing to pass on the skills we have acquired, through an often hard and
humiliating experience, to help women achieve their goals whilst avoiding
some of the more painful pitfalls. We need to campaign to persuade those
who have not yet taken the first step to power to do so. It is crucial to do this
now whilst women are at the crossroads of their choice, so that we look
more confidently to the future.
There are many who disagree with me, who loathe 'male institutions' and
will have no truck with them. They will see this quest for power as nothing
more than absorbing the careerism of men, but they fail to recognise that
decision making has been usurped by men and used to shape society to meet
male priorities. Men have no right to the institutions of power. Demanding
power sharing for women is part of opening it up and dispersing it to grea-
ter numbers of people as they grow in stature to handle it responsibly. It is
therefore a profoundly desirable democratic development. It may be a high-
risk strategy, but it is better than no strategy at all.
The ideas of the women's movement have permeated the thinking of
Introduction: Women Need Power 5
many women who start their sentences with Τ am not a feminist but . . .'
and go on to make pro-women statements. We must have confidence that
women will use power in a better way than sceptics assume. Wanting women
to become powerful is an essential part of supporting policy objectives.
Why Train Women?
If women are determined not to give up, how will we get on? What do we
need to help us break through to positions of power and influence in public
life? We need to know the mechanics of how society works to brave entry.
But more than this we need the confidence to stick it out long enough to
learn how to operate within this public sphere. There is no way that a book
can create confidence, but it may supply some of the motivation to build it.
This book arises from the experience of running training programmes
with women in trade unions, and management, political and voluntary
organisations. Such training is aimed at helping women acquire the skills
they need to be active in public and professional life.
Women have not been trained to play a role within public life. Our educa-
tion does not open up the necessary skills and the expectations of peer
groups, teachers, families and authority figures provide a formidable obsta-
cle to be overcome. A woman has to deal with both her own self image and
that reflected back at her by society. Whereas a man has only his self image
to overcome. Women's domestic responsibilities mean there is little time to
become involved in organisations around work such as trade unions and
professional organisations where men have traditionally learnt their skills.
Whilst women are the sustaining fabric of voluntary organisations we are
seldom its decision makers. Where we do take office in women's organis-
ations we may learn the skills for public life, but our organisations seldom
have the power of patronage to nominate us for public office.
There are also straightforward discriminatory barriers to fight. Commit-
tees often have a token woman to give the 'women's point of view' and men
then feel they have discharged their responsibilities and can continue to
appoint old boys from the club. Even when the odd enlightened body seeks
more women they do not always know where to find them.
Dealing With Fear
Whilst training is a collectively organised activity, you learn as an individ-
ual. A group can give you support and allow you to recognise that your own
feelings of inadequacy and failure are shared by others. It can also help you
monitor your progress in overcoming your problems. But you experience the
fears and doubts alone. I have chosen to be explicit about fear because I
have found it to be a constant problem for most women in all the groups I
help train.